Death of a Second Wife (A Dotsy Lamb Travel Mystery) by Maria Hudgins Page B

were talking about. I assume she was on the phone when she wrote this.”
    “I thought maybe jewelry?”
    “Possible. I suggest we ask Dad and Juergen.” With his little finger, he pointed to some numbers Stephanie had written off to one side of the sheet. “Looks like a phone number.”
    “Too many numbers.”
    “Not if it includes a country code. It starts with 001. That’s the U.S.”
    “I think we should call it.”
    “Okay, but let’s talk to Dad and Juergen first. No hurry.” He turned the paper sideways. “What’s this? It looks like Jo bury or Jo berg.”
    “Looks like her pen was skipping. I’d say Jo bury.”
    * * * * *
    I found Juergen in a small office-like room tucked between the living room and the stairwell. A couple of filing cabinets, a desk strewn with papers, a laptop computer, a swivel chair on a clear vinyl mat. Juergen sat with his back to the open door.
    “Knock, knock,” I said.
    He was on the phone.
    “Excuse me.” I whispered. “I’ll talk to you later.”
    * * * * *
    Brian and Chet had retreated, inexplicably, to the kitchen with a bottle of Macallan’s Scotch. Brian sat on the counter, his feet crossed at the ankles. Chet sat on a stool at the butcher-block table, hunched over his glass of single malt, neat. It shocked me to see how much larger than Chet Brian was now. Brian was talking about money. Chet may or may not have been listening. I didn’t interrupt them.
    * * * * *
    Lettie emerged from the bathroom adjacent to our room, dressed for bed, her face smeared with the green wrinkle-reducing goo she’d been using for years. She carried a bottle of lotion to her bed and began slathering her legs.
    I was making a copy of Stephanie’s note because I had decided to give the original to Detective Kronenberg. I assumed they’d be back soon because they’d left crime scene tape up.
    “Will the police come back in the morning, do you think?”
    “I wouldn’t be surprised. What do you think now, Dotsy? I’ve been mulling it over in my head all evening. I haven’t heard a word anyone else has said to me.”
    “Me, too,” I said, placing Stephanie’s note on top of the dresser and slipping my own copy into a drawer. “I don’t believe Stephanie committed suicide. It makes no sense. She wasn’t depressed. She was picking out wine a few minutes before . . . well, actually I don’t know that. I don’t know how long it was after t hat phone call to Juergen. It couldn’t have been long though, could it? Unless she came back from the bunker and then went back again later.”
    “Were there any footprints in the snow leading to the bunker?” Lettie cocked her head and looked up from her slathering.
    I thought carefully. “No. Erin and I were the first to walk over that direction and there were no footprints. Ours were the first. The snow was pristine, I’m sure.”
    “So no one entered or left the bunker after it snowed. Wonder what time that was?”
    “You know what, Lettie? I think it was someone from outside. Someone from the town, maybe. At first I thought the only way to get here was the long route by the road, but then Juergen showed me the elevator. We talked about the elevator at dinner, remember? How easy would it be for someone to have come up in the elevator, and slipped back down into town without anyone here seeing them?”
    “What about Gisele?”
    “What about her?”
    “Did she have a key to the tunnel? Did she use the elevator?”
    “I don’t know, but I’ll bet she did. Her parents live in LaMotte.”
    “Who else? Don’t they have a handyman or something?”
    “Don’t know.” I kicked off my shoes and flopped down on my bed. “This is rather useless speculation, isn’t it? We haven’t the vaguest idea of a motive—motives. Whoever killed Gisele probably had a different motive for killing Stephanie, assuming the same person did both.”
    “One was killed for some unknown reason . The other one saw the murder and had to be killed as